


Company

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Miss 2059
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nightmares, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Episode: s02ep06 A Very Small Insignificant Wrinkle in Time, Pre-Episode: s02ep07 Tentalizing, Team as Family, absolutely bastardous of me to start this ao3 tag huh, or not if you like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 03:45:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14992037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Every time Victoria closes her eyes, she sees the explosion.





	Company

**Author's Note:**

> i'm building this tag with my own two hands, i guess. if you're one of the five whole people who will read this: congrats! hope you like it even if i don't.

Victoria was used to being included in a capital-g Group. For awhile it had just been her and Arden. Then Arden had gone and it had been her and her pageant friends. And then Endar had come along and labelled them a pack and that fit. That felt good. That felt right. When ‘pack’ was all of them, working together to save the world, even after Arden was absorbed, that had been right and good and safe.

And then Payton was there. And then Daphnii was accepted. And then Laheer was… Back, somehow. And Arden… Arden was back, too, a little bit. Her pack, her capital-g Group, was fitting itself back in place. Even when Endar and Tiggle were gone. Like she’d traded them for Arden’s mind.

That was all Victoria could think about as she lay hugging her pillow in her big bed. That she had traded her two best friends in the whole entire universe for her sister to be with her again. Had it been worth it? Had saving Arden been worth losing them? But that wasn’t how the world worked, was it? Justice didn’t work like that. Death didn’t care that you’d just brought your sister’s mind back.

They didn’t get much downtime. There was hardly time to sleep, so when they had the time to most of them passed out immediately. But she _couldn’t_ sleep. Every time she tried, the explosion played over again in her mind.

They had to honor her friends’ last wishes, to follow the coordinates to the last of the orb planets, but… Tri insisted that she needed to sleep. That they all needed to sleep. Daphnii had already passed out on the floor without hope of being moved by the time Tri strongly suggested and then demanded that, so at least aer sleep talking wouldn’t bother her. Not that it mattered, because she couldn’t sleep anyway.

All Victoria could think about was watching that ship explode. Knowing her friends were on it. Knowing that things weren’t going to fix themselves this time. This wasn’t like with Arden, where there was at least a _hope_ that they could save her from the Vortix, after they’d found out that at the very least her body was alive. This was different. This wasn’t like watching Tri kill people to survive, either. It _hurt._

Victoria was almost relieved when the door slid open, although that relief faded when she saw that while Tri _was_ at the door like Victoria had been hoping, she unfortunately wasn’t the only one.

Laheer had been the one to open the door, with the hand he wasn’t using to drag Payton along by the arm. Tri was standing on his other side with her arms crossed, rolling her eyes like usual. Victoria sat up and glared at them, even if she was well aware of how the aftermath of hours of crying could ruin one’s intimidation tactics. “What are you three doing here?”

“Don’t ask me.” Payton kept trying to pull his arm out of Laheer’s grip. It probably would’ve been more effective if he wasn’t so tired that he was trying to pull the wrong arm with nothing attached to it instead of the one Laheer was actually holding. “Princess over here dragged us out of bed for no reason-well, I don’t know if Tri was asleep, but _I was,_ so-”

“I helped,” Tri sniffed. Laheer let go of Payton’s arm and she shoved him face first onto Victoria’s bed. “Go to sleep here, stowaway.”

Payton looked too exhausted to disagree, _or_ to offer any of his own theories about what was going on, so Victoria looked at Tri for answers, only to find that she was already climbing into the bed with her too. “Seriously, what is going on?”

“We thought it would be best if we kept you company.” Tri stiffly flopped her arm across Victoria’s chest to push her down. “So we’re doing that. Arden’s still where it’s safe for us, and we figured Daphnii would be better off in Payton’s room, so I dragged aer over there. Ae’s… Had a long day.”

Victoria found herself unable to feel even a little smug about Tri warming up to Daphnii. “You guys don’t have to do this.” She scooted closer to Tri subconsciously to make room for Laheer. “You _really_ don’t have to do this.”

“We want to.” Laheer somehow folded his body down to hug around her waist from her other side, and Victoria felt Payton squeeze her legs like they were a teddy bear from wherever in her blankets he had disappeared to. “If you want us to leave, we will. Or you can leave and we’ll stay here. But we thought after what happened it would be, you know, better. To have company.”

“We’ll prove he has a brain in there yet,” Tri muttered, resting her head on Victoria’s shoulder. “Now go to sleep. I know how much you humans need your sleep.”

Still confused, Victoria adjusted herself so that Laheer’s horns weren’t digging into her ribs quite so much. “Seriously, you guys don’t have to do this.”

“Like grape boy said,” Payton grumbled, crawling up her body a little so he could hug at more of her knee area instead of at her ankles. “We’re doing this because we want to. Because we care about you, Vic.”

“See?” Tri squeezed a little tighter. “You’re ours.”

 _“Grape boy?”_ Laheer hissed, sounding extremely offended before pausing and hesitantly asking, “is that a bad thing? What’s a grape?”

Nobody answered him, which was probably for the best. Victoria sighed a little and forced her shoulders to relax. When she was a little kid, she used to pile cushions on top of her covers to help her sleep at night. The pressure made it easier. This isn’t so different from that-Tri’s heavy arm across her chest keeping her safe and Laheer’s hand wrapped around her waist and whatever Payton is doing with her legs now. They’re like a living, breathing weighted blanket.

She closed her eyes and dreamed about the stars until the first time she wakes up, when she had about ten seconds of panicked, fast breathing before Tri started rubbing her shoulder and she passed out again. The second time she was up for about three minutes, shaking hard and staring at the ceiling and trying to block out the sound of her own crying before Laheer picked up where Tri left off and soothed her back to sleep. The next time she woke up, Payton was petting her hair from his newest position.

It was… Sweet. Payton’s human, so he was probably the only one of the three of them who could really understand what she was going through here, but it was still sweet. It was no wonder she loved them so much. They’re her people now. Her pack. Her Group. Not like her pageant buddies who she’d get drunk with and then throw up with out of guilt or like her and her meager handful of friends from school had been. This was different.

These people were her friends. She loved them. Weirdly. And they loved her. Weirdly. Maybe they aren’t even her friends-Tri’s been more like family than her own parents for a long time now. Payton and Laheer could be family too. Arden already is. And Daphnii had potential.

In the end, it doesn’t matter, because they’re _hers._ Which means she’s not going to let them get killed, too. Friends, family, something else, whatever-they’re her people. Always and forever.

The next time she woke up, she was smiling through her tears.


End file.
